Cable TV firms offering more options

Companies try to anticipate evolving viewer habits

Updated 10:00 pm, Monday, April 10, 2006

Richard Parsons, left, chairman and CEO of Time Warner, and Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts participate in a discussion Monday at the National Cable Television Association's conference.

Richard Parsons, left, chairman and CEO of Time Warner, and Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts participate in a discussion Monday at the National Cable Television Association's conference.

Photo: / Associated Press

Cable TV firms offering more options

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ATLANTA -- There's a big power shift in the world of paid television, and not it's not between the traditional rivals of cable and satellite. Consumers are getting more control over what and how they watch, and cable operators are doing everything they can to cater to their rapidly evolving desires.

As the cable TV industry's annual trade show got under way in Atlanta on Monday, one of the hottest topics was finding ways to keep abreast of consumers' TV viewing habits, which seem to change daily as shows become available over the Internet, on portable devices and on DVDs.

Underscoring just how quickly TV business models are evolving, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC announced Monday that it would offer full-length episodes of several of its hit shows, including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," for free streaming over the Internet on the day after they appear on ABC. The shows will be supported by advertising that viewers can't skip through.

Disney described the effort as a two-month test, but if it's successful, it could pose problems for cable companies, which are working hard to get more premium shows available on their video-on-demand offerings, one of several promising new business areas for cable.

Yet cable operators continue to struggle to find top-rated shows to drive use of their growing on-demand services, which currently make up about 5 percent of viewership in the places they're available, a figure cable executives would like to expand.

ABC has yet to strike a deal to let cable operators offer its hit shows on demand, but CBS and NBC both signed deals this year with Comcast to offer replays of hit shows for 99 cents. Time Warner Cable also offered paid on-demand replays of college basketball games from CBS last month.

Cable executives say their efforts to date to get viewers back to the couch with key services such as on-demand viewing have had promising results, but they say more has yet to be done.

Cable companies are also hopeful about signing up more customers for digital video recorders, which gives the companies income from monthly fees. Cablevision Systems Corp. says it will try out a next-generation version of DVRs that run off a network instead of from expensive set-top boxes equipped with hard drives.

But there, too, obstacles remain. Programmers, for one, are concerned that they may not be compensated for extra uses of their shows.

In other efforts to offer consumers more flexibility, Time Warner Cable is running a pilot program in Columbia, S.C., that allows viewers to restart many programs from the beginning. Those replays also don't let you skip through the ads, allaying fears from advertisers.

Peter Stern, senior vice president of strategic planning at Time Warner Cable, says consumer satisfaction with the start-over service is "off the charts." Time Warner hopes to offer it in seven or eight more markets by the end of the year.

Meantime, cable programmers are also feeling pressure as time-shifting devices such as DVRs liberate consumers from having to watch whatever happens to be on at that moment.